What Would Marvell’s CEO Say Now?
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The past month was painful for shareholders of Marvell Technology (MRVL). The stock lost 37.0% from October 2 to November 2, 2026, while the S&P 500 lost 2.3%. Judging by Marvell’s latest earnings call, its chief executive would talk about growth, and the reported figures back much of that.
The business is still growing quickly, yet the share price went the other way. Two of the month’s biggest falls came with a deal. The stock fell 13.2% on October 29, when talks to buy Lumentum were reported, and 12.7% on November 2, when Marvell agreed to buy it in an all-stock deal valued at about $115 billion including debt. So what exactly would management point to?
Marvell Can Point To Record Sales
Management’s first point would be the latest quarter. On the August 27, 2026 call, management said Marvell “delivered record revenue of $2.739 billion” in fiscal Q2 2027. That figure is up 37% from a year earlier.
The second point would be that growth is set to pick up. Management guided fiscal Q3 2027 revenue to $3.15 billion at the midpoint, putting it more than 50% above the same quarter a year earlier.
Those are fair points, and reported figures back the first point. The second is still a forecast for a quarter Marvell has not reported, and both came on August 27, before the past month’s fall.
Investors Now Pay Far Less For Marvell’s Sales
Since the summer, investors have cut what they pay for each dollar of Marvell’s sales, while the sales themselves kept growing. Measured against the sales Marvell later reported for the four quarters ended August 1, 2026, the end-of-June share price came to 28.3 times those sales. That marked the highest of the 40 quarter ends since fiscal Q3 2017. At the November 2 close, those same sales were priced at 16.3 times, a figure still far above the S&P 500’s 3.3 times.
Over those four quarters, Marvell’s revenue was $9.45 billion, up 30.6% from the year before. In August, management also raised its fiscal 2027 revenue outlook to roughly $12 billion from about $11.5 billion a quarter earlier. At its October 6 investor day, Marvell lifted its fiscal 2028 revenue outlook to $20 billion.
Two Soft Spots In Marvell’s Latest Report
The first is Marvell’s smaller business covering its communications and other end markets. Revenue there was $568 million in fiscal Q2 2027, down 3% from the quarter before. For fiscal Q3 2027, management expects it to fall in the low to mid-teens percentage range from both the prior quarter and a year earlier, before a solid recovery in the fourth quarter.
The second is cash. Cash flow from operations was $606 million in fiscal Q2 2027, down slightly from the quarter before. Management said this decline mainly reflected higher capacity prepayments to suppliers. Marvell expects to make about $1 billion of those prepayments in fiscal 2027, and management says they will be applied against future material purchases.
Marvell Now Keeps Far More Of Each Sales Dollar
Marvell’s operating margin was 16.8% over the four quarters ended August 1, 2026, up from 6.0% a year earlier. Two years earlier, the company lost money at the operating level, posting a margin of -7.5%. The latest figure is higher than at 34 of the past 40 quarter ends. It sits slightly ahead of AMD’s 15.7%, though well below Broadcom’s 48.5%.
Marvell also carries little debt. Its total debt was 3.4% of its market value at the November 2 close, compared with 19.2% for the S&P 500.
Marvell’s data center business brought in 79% of revenue in fiscal Q2 2027. Management guided data center revenue to grow roughly 75% from a year earlier in fiscal Q3 2027. That growth rate will be the next test of management’s case, and Marvell is expected to report it in late November or early December 2026.
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